RIM lists some of the APIs coming to the BlackBerry 10 SDK in the evolution to Gold status

One of the main points that came out of this years BlackBerry World and BlackBerry 10 Jam is that RIM is dedicated to developers. We have seen numerous posts done on the BlackBerry DevBlog lately that have provided updated emulators and plans for the new operating system. In this latest article Tim Neil has detailed what to expect from the “First Beta” of the BlackBerry 10 SDKs, and he has also included a list of the main APIs that will be made available to third-party developers.

Obviously RIM is taking things in steps, as this will be the “First Beta”, with more coming down the line. Tim describes this as an “evolution to greatness”, and that they have provided the foundational building blocks for developers to make awesome apps for the BlackBerry 10 platform. Tim also goes on to clarify that there will be a series of SDK releases on the road to achieving “Gold Status”.

As we evolve each of the SDKs, it means that on top of adding functionality we may need to make changes to functionality released in a previous beta. We are making sure that we examine all the possible angles before we make changes that could affect your application’s code during the Beta and are trying to minimize these changes as much as possible. However, there are times when we’ll have to make changes to ensure that we have solid footings for moving forward with follow up releases. As we move closer to gold, our goal is to make sure that changes in the SDK do not affect compatibility with your code.

One of the most exciting parts of this specific article by Tim Neil is that he provides a short list of the main APIs that RIM is going to make available to developers for BlackBerry 10.

These APIs are still seeing refactoring as we move through all the use cases of our core applications. We want to ensure that both our core apps are using the same APIs as 3rd party developers and that the APIs see minimal changes after they are made available in a Beta.

I won’t list all of the APIs that are coming, but I’ll list the hot topics where I usually get inquiries:

BBM™

PIM (Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Notes)

Messages/Email

NFC

Share/Invoke Framework

Adding your menu item to an existing app

Invoking and being invoked by another app

String pattern registry

Geocoding & reverse geocoding

Bluetooth®

All these and more will be coming in follow-up Beta releases, so make sure you grab the SDKs and start building the core of your application to ensure that you’re ready to integrate these features as soon as they’re available!

This is some exciting news, and it is nice to see that RIM is keeping their end of the bargain as far as development for BlackBerry 10 is concerned. I have no doubt that by the time BB10 is upon us we will have some truly awesome apps available to us. If you want to check out the full article from Tim Neil you can hit up the source link below.